NICOLE MILLER/Daily Bruin Freshman Preston
Griffin watches the ball after making contact in the
Bruins’ game against Oregon State last week.
By Scott Bair
Daily Bruin Contributor
A baseball season is a lot like a marathon. Some people go into
a full sprint right out of the gate, and some people take it slow
in order to finish strong. But it is consistency, not how you start
or finish, that determines who crosses the finish line first.
After 57 games, the Bruins finally crossed the finish line with
a 30-27 record. The lethal combination of key injuries, suspect
defense and plain bad luck acted like dead weight, slowing down the
Bruin drive for the postseason.
Much to UCLA’s dismay, the tape had already been taken
down before they reached the finish. And after six long-distance
road trips that took them from Honolulu, Hawaii, to Manhattan,
Kan., the Bruins won’t be taking the plane ride they wanted
to take the most ““ the one to the College World Series.
For some players, the end of the season offers the possibility
of a professional career. But for others, the season brings a
lifetime of baseball to a close.
“I tried not to think about that because I didn’t
want to get emotional. At the end of the game, I told the older
guys I’m really going to miss them,” UCLA Head Coach
Gary Adams said. “I really couldn’t say much more or
else I would have gotten all choked up. The (Josh) Canaleses and
the (Brian) Barons really did come through.”
While the Bruins were struggling to maintain uniform play, two
Bruins acted as the personification of consistency. Designated
hitter Brian Baron flirted with .500 for a majority of the season,
finishing with a .443 batting average and the all-time UCLA record,
while shortstop/second baseman Josh Canales hit .421 against the
Pac-10 and hit safely in 39 of the last 40 games.
The Bruins’ first trip took them to Hawaiian paradise and
charged them up for the race to come. The Bruins were running at
full strength when the gun went off, beginning the season with a
7-2 record.
UCLA took a seven-game winning streak into their first true test
of the season, a non-conference series against arch-rival No. 2
USC.
The game also brought the two finest pitchers in college
baseball, UCLA’s Josh Karp and USC’s Mark Prior, to the
same pitching mound.
That night, when the college baseball spotlight shone down on
Jackie Robinson Stadium, the Bruins took center stage. The
Karp-Prior matchup lived up to expectations, as the two combined
for 21 strikeouts and four runs allowed before they left the game.
USC carried a 3-1 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning. The
Bruins had two on with two outs when senior Adam Berry stepped to
the plate.
Berry took the fate of the game and a 2-2 slider over the
left-field wall for a walk-off home run.
“We’re learning late in the game,” Berry said
after the victory. “But it’s great to know that even in
a tense situation, we can come back and win.”
From that game on, the Bruin squad that lost a NCAA-record 12
players to the draft began to find an identity. UCLA became known
as a team of scrappers that would keep the game close and win it
with late-inning heroics and timely hitting.
UCLA was legitimately running with the powerhouses of the Pac-10
going into the conference schedule, charging full steam ahead with
a 12-5 record and two nationally-ranked scalps in their pocket.
The Bruins were up and down like this year’s stock market
against Pac-10 teams, failing to regain the momentum they had early
in the season. Their reliance on comeback wins began to haunt them.
The comeback drives and lucky bounces were now going the other way,
building a nervous tension toward the future.
The Bruins were able to overcome defensive miscues with their
tenacity and raw athletic ability. That style of play became harder
to keep up as the injury bug began to consume key pieces of the
Bruin talent pool.
Pitcher Jon Brandt was the first to go. Back pain during the
Washington series in mid-April sidelined UCLA’s No. 2 starter
for over three weeks and sent the Bruin rotation into disarray.
The Bruins squeaked out a series victory before flying out to
Kansas State for a series against the Wildcats. The Bruins lost the
first game but had the second in hand 12-9 before it was postponed
due to darkness.
The next day the Bruins woke up to 45 mile-per-hour winds that
they dismissed as a freak occurrence of Midwest weather. Little did
they know, the wind had apparently picked up their luck and
scattered it over the Kansas plains. The Bruins gave up four
wind-aided runs in the inning and lost that second contest. They
later lost game three.
If the sweep was a jab to the team’s fortunes, the injury
sustained to Josh Karp was the knockout punch.
“I think when we got into that rut, it seemed like all of
our injuries hit all at once. I think our team was affected by
that,” Adams said.
From that point, the Bruins won only five of their next 17
games.
The loss of Brandt and Karp drove the Bruins into a funk that
they never emerged from, and they got swept in two crucial series
against USC and Cal.
The Bruins stayed in playoff contention until the Arizona State
series because of their early season wins and a tough team
mentality, but in the end UCLA could not overcome the crucial
injuries to make the postseason.
And the marathon was over.